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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Free Business Models and Why They Matter to Me',
	'<{subtitle}>' => 'Written in <span title="Online Education Strategies">UNIV 1001</span> of <a href="http://www.uopeople.edu/">University of the People</a>, finalised on 2016-09-14',
	'<{copyright year}>' => '2016',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<p>
	I&apos;m a programmer at heart.
	I love the challenge of trying to get computers to work the way that I need them to, and I love even more when I complete a programming project.
	However, I&apos;m also a free software user.
	I don&apos;t trust code that can&apos;t be freely audited by the public (Saeed, 2011), not to mention that if proprietary software doesn&apos;t function the way that I need it to, I have no remedy.
	With free software, I can make changes and tweaks so that the software works the way that I need it to.
	Likewise, with free software, development doesn&apos;t halt just because one company doesn&apos;t want to put more resources into a given project.
	As long as interested users have access to the code, the software can live on and flourish.
	I will not take these freedoms away from my users, so that leaves me two options.
	I can either find a way to make money writing free software, or I can give up my dream of being a professional programmer and get a different job, writing software only in my spare time.
	Obviously, the former is preferable to me.
	To make this happen, I will need to make use of free software business models.
</p>
<p>
	Just as a quick note to anyone that doesn&apos;t know about free software: free software isn&apos;t software that comes without a cost (Saeed, 2011).
	That is to say, free software isn&apos;t always gratis and gratis software isn&apos;t always free.
	It&apos;s important to understand that distinction.
	Instead, free software is software that&apos;s unencumbered.
	It is software that empowers the user instead of cutting them down.
	All source code is available, and reuse and adaption are not only legally allowed, but in my experience, often outright encouraged.
	While a proprietary (nonfree) software business model may be considered good for the companies developing that software, it&apos;s quite an abusive model when looked at from the customer&apos;s perspective (Blankenhorn, 2009).
	It&apos;s amazing that customers put up with this to start with, but it&apos;s outright horrifying that they still put up with it today! After all, other options are becoming readily available.
	When I write software, I want to be a part of this shift toward a more user-centric (Saeed, 2011), freedom-friendly, and forward-thinking business model.
</p>
<p>
	Free software is important to me because I feel that without learning from past generations and building on what they have built, we humans no better than other animals.
	It is our ability to learn as a species, instead of just as individuals, that really sets us apart.
	No one generation was able to invent everything that we have now, such as harnessed electricity, modern medicine, and even decent shelters.
	I am strongly of the opinion that we&apos;d be a much more advanced civilization by now if people weren&apos;t hoarding knowledge using copyright law, patent law, and even just simple refusal to share designs and source code.
	It is our right and our obligation as human beings to share our knowledge and not restrict access to ideas.
	However, while I personally feel that free software&apos;s real benefit lies in the future, free software has proven even in the short term to hold tangible, practical benefits.
	With free software comes the freedom to study what our machines are doing and how they are doing it, adapt it to meet our needs, and share our adaption so others aren&apos;t reinventing the wheel (Saeed, 2011).
	The source code is autitable, so bugs and security issues are found and fixed more quickly than with proprietary software (Asay, 2007).
	Proprietary software often has less bug reports against it, but it&apos;s not because there are fewer bugs; it&apos;s because the bugs aren&apos;t visible to the public (Noyes, 2010).
	As Eric Raymond says, &quot;Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.&quot; (Raymond, 2000).
	Bugs aren&apos;t the only thing that are shallow though.
	Malicious features such as built-in code to spy on the user, as well as back doors into the software, can also be easily seen.
	With the source code readily available, we can trust that in free software, these features don&apos;t exist (Saeed, 2011).
	It&apos;s worth noting though that such features *can* exist, they just tend not to.
	For example, Ubuntu&apos;s default desktop contains spyware (Lee, 2012), though it is now disabled by default (Sneddon, 2016), no doubt due to user complaints (Kluyver, 2012).
	On the rare occasion that these malicious features exist though, they are easily spotted and, if you&apos;re not uncomfortable compiling source code, easily removed.
	You can trust that if there&apos;s a major problem with the software, someone is going to find it and bring it to light.
</p>
<p>
	Free software also comes with a lack of corporate control.
	Because one company doesn&apos;t control the source code or the software exclusively, vendor lock-in is not really an issue (Saeed, 2011).
	Vendor lock-in serves only to create monopolies, which hinder competition and stagnate growth (The Linux Information Project, 2006).
	These monopolies also allow proprietary software vendors to bloat their prices (Saeed, 2011), further ripping off customers.
	Free software tends to be better at supporting open standards (Noyes, 2010), giving free software better interoperability.
	Likewise, free software tends to function with less hardware requirements (Noyes, 2010), so upgrading to the latest version of your software doesn&apos;t require upgrading to expensive new hardware (Saeed, 2011), unlike with many bloated proprietary projects.
</p>
<p>
	If you truly don&apos;t want to rip off your customers, there are more free software business models available than you might think.
	One of the most obvious options is to not sell the software itself, but rather, to sell consulting services (Blankenhorn, 2009) and support (Wayner, 2010).
	One of the major considerations made by businesses when choosing what software to use is the availability of support packages (Hollar, 2013).
	Instead of having software be the product, support packages can be where you make your money (Wayner, 2010) and the software itself can be gratis.
	Support contracts aren&apos;t unfamiliar to companies, as proprietary software vendors offer these as well.
	Support contracts should of course include your company fixing any bugs reported to you by those with a support contract within a reasonable time frame (Kingdon, 1997).
	Consulting services can include both helping customers get your software set up the way that they want, as well as writing customer-specific code for customers that want help integrating your products into their work flow (Kingdon, 1997).
	You can of course build new features that customers request,charging a fee for your time (Kingdon, 1997), then integrate those new features into the main software that you offer.
	Offering classes on how to make the most of your software can also net some money.
	Even proprietary software vendors often offer such classes (Kingdon, 1997).
	If you plan to have redistributors helping you get your software out there, you might want to look into making arrangements with them that will be profitable for your company.
	This could include trying to get the redistributor to purchase a bulk support contract or getting them to recommend to their customers that their customers purchase support contracts directly from you (Kingdon, 1997).
</p>
<p>
	Likewise, the product could be hardware instead (Wayner, 2010), and the free software is included to make the hardware function.
	An advantage of this, from a freedom perspective, would be that it would be possible to freely license the hardware specifications as well, opening up the hardware itself to the same kind of modifications as the software.
</p>
<p>
	Another great option, and one that&apos;s not going away any time soon, is cloud storage and computing (Blankenhorn, 2009).
	You can rent out use of your servers, using your software only to make our servers function the way that you and your customers need them to.
	In renting your servers, you can take the technical work out of your customers hands and allow them to focus instead on what their business is really about.
	With your software code available, customers can feel safe knowing that if there&apos;s a problem, anyone can fix it.
	If your customers want a security audit done, they don&apos;t have to trust black-box-type testing by unknown penetration testers that you employ.
	They can hire anyone that they feel is qualified to run an extensive check over all the code on the server.
	Likewise, they can try your software out on a local machine to see if it will suit their needs before committing to using your servers for hosting.
</p>
<p>
	Just as important as knowing which free software business models work is knowing which ones don&apos;t.
	In particular, selling documentation is an option (Wayner, 2010), but in practice, it doesn&apos;t actually work (Kingdon, 1997).
	Likewise, customers don&apos;t tend to care about code quality enough to pay more for cleaner code (Kingdon, 1997).
	Cleaning up messy code and writing documentation still needs to be done, but the cost of doing these will have to be built into the costs of other services that you provide (Kingdon, 1997).
</p>
<p>
	Likewise, managing a free software project for profit comes with different challenges than managing a proprietary software project for profit.
	You&apos;ll need to embrace the strengths of free software to keep control of your project.
	For example, you must remember to take into account the efforts of volunteers that love your product and just want to make it better.
	They&apos;ll often contribute bug fixes and feature patches.
	If you don&apos;t manage to integrate important fixes and features into your code, it could lead to forks of your software.
	These forks will not only fail to make you money, but could even cost you customers, who would complain that the forked version is more featureful (Kingdon, 1997).
	Including patches from contributors will help your users feel more involved, as well as offer you extra developers without the extra cost.
	Allowing your software to be available even to non-customers can even be used to help spread the word about your software, drawing in more customers.
	However, you must be sure to make it clear that it&apos;s the software that&apos;s available without charge, not your support.
	Support comes with a price tag, and a bad experience with your software without a support contract is not the same thing as a bad experience with your company.
	You must be sure to convey this clearly and effectively.
	Operating within a free software business model can be a bit tricky, but it&apos;s well worth the effort.
</p>
<div class="APA_references">
	<h2>References:</h2>
	<p>
		Asay, M. (2007, September 27). Open-source vs. proprietary software bugs: Which get squashed fastest? - CNET. Retrieved from <a href="https://www.cnet.com./news/open-source-vs-proprietary-software-bugs-which-get-squashed-fastest/"><code>https://www.cnet.com./news/open-source-vs-proprietary-software-bugs-which-get-squashed-fastest/</code></a>
	</p>
	<p>
		Blankenhorn, D. (2009, December 2). 11 open source business models | ZDNet. Retrieved from <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/article/11-open-source-business-models/"><code>http://www.zdnet.com/article/11-open-source-business-models/</code></a>
	</p>
	<p>
		Hollar, K. (2013, August 15). Business Software Buying Trends 2013- Capterra Industry Survey. Retrieved from <a href="http://www.capterra.com./software-buying-trends-2013"><code>http://www.capterra.com./software-buying-trends-2013</code></a>
	</p>
	<p>
		Kingdon, J. (1997, February 4). Free Software Business Models. Retrieved from <a href="http://www.stromian.com/Bizmod.html"><code>http://www.stromian.com/Bizmod.html</code></a>
	</p>
	<p>
		Kluyver, T. (2012, September 22). Bug #1054776 &quot;Don&apos;t include remote searches in the home lens&quot; : Bugs : unity-lens-shopping package : Ubuntu. Retrieved from <a href="https://bugs.launchpad.net./ubuntu/+source/unity-lens-shopping/+bug/1054776"><code>https://bugs.launchpad.net./ubuntu/+source/unity-lens-shopping/+bug/1054776</code></a>
	</p>
	<p>
		Lee, M. (2012, October 29). Privacy in Ubuntu 12.10: Amazon Ads and Data Leaks | Electronic Frontier Foundation. Retrieved from <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/privacy-ubuntu-1210-amazon-ads-and-data-leaks"><code>https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/privacy-ubuntu-1210-amazon-ads-and-data-leaks</code></a>
	</p>
	<p>
		The Linux Information Project. (2006, June 12). Monopoly and technological stagnation, by The Linux Information Project. Retrieved from <a href="http://linfo.org./monopoly_technology.html"><code>http://linfo.org./monopoly_technology.html</code></a>
	</p>
	<p>
		Noyes, K. (2010, November 5). 10 Reasons Open Source Is Good for Business | PCWorld. Retrieved from <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/209891/10_reasons_open_source_is_good_for_business.html"><code>http://www.pcworld.com/article/209891/10_reasons_open_source_is_good_for_business.html</code></a>
	</p>
	<p>
		Raymond, E. S. (2000). Release Early, Release Often. Retrieved from <a href="https://www.catb.org./~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s04.html"><code>https://www.catb.org./~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s04.html</code></a>
	</p>
	<p>
		Saeed, S. (2011, December 8). Top 10 Benefits of Using Free Software | Edutopia. Retrieved from <a href="http://www.edutopia.org./blog/benefits-free-software-shahzad-saeed"><code>http://www.edutopia.org./blog/benefits-free-software-shahzad-saeed</code></a>
	</p>
	<p>
		Sneddon, J. (2016, January 8). Ubuntu &apos;Spyware&apos; Will Be Disabled In Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. Retrieved from <a href="http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk./2016/01/ubuntu-online-search-feature-disabled-16-04"><code>http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk./2016/01/ubuntu-online-search-feature-disabled-16-04</code></a>
	</p>
	<p>
		Wayner, P. (2010, June 28). Profiting from open source -- without selling out | InfoWorld. Retrieved from <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/2627153/software-licensing/profiting-from-open-source----without-selling-out.html?page=2"><code>http://www.infoworld.com/article/2627153/software-licensing/profiting-from-open-source----without-selling-out.html?page=2</code></a>
	</p>
	<p>
		Wayner, P. (2010, June 28). Profiting from open source -- without selling out | InfoWorld. Retrieved from <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/2627153/software-licensing/profiting-from-open-source----without-selling-out.html?page=3"><code>http://www.infoworld.com/article/2627153/software-licensing/profiting-from-open-source----without-selling-out.html?page=3</code></a>
	</p>
	<p>
		Wayner, P. (2010, June 28). Profiting from open source -- without selling out | InfoWorld. Retrieved from <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/2627153/software-licensing/profiting-from-open-source----without-selling-out.html?page=4"><code>http://www.infoworld.com/article/2627153/software-licensing/profiting-from-open-source----without-selling-out.html?page=4</code></a>
	</p>
</div>
END
);
